MeanMesa Cuts the Budget

If one could imagine a group of risk averse, codependent doctors circling mindlessly around a dying patient who needed surgery, the picture might begin to resemble the "budget slashing" charade unfolding in Washington.

"I don't want to use up our favorite bandages!"

"I think it's disgusting when all that blood comes out!"

"We shouldn't start until there's someone here to blame if we screw up!"

"We could just give him a haircut.  His insurance will still pay when he dies."

You get the idea.  There are so-o-o many "sacred cows" grazing in the Congress.  Worse, the cow path through the vale where "sacred cows" become "oxen gored," hasn't seen a bovine traveler for years.  The supply side clan continues to rage forward in some kind of hypnotic spell, transfixed with the idea that the whole problem is simply not further lubricating the production of goods which no one has the money to buy.

The handiest of all "talking points" predictably include the phrase "costing jobs."  The least handy of all talking points meticulously avoid the phrase of "increasing consumer incomes."  The worst nightmare of the hypnotists is something which might drift into the question: "After we spent all this money, why is our country still falling apart?"

(image source)

 A "dark humor" cartoon from Think Progress

Well, although the patriots in the House have bravely set their targets on the poor, the sick and the elderly, MeanMesa thinks there actually are  both some political plans and some budget cuts which might make sense.  Let's take a look -- by the numbers -- at a few possibilities.  Many of these ideas have been posted before on this blog.

1.  Social Security

Although Social Security is entirely self-financed and does not manifest itself as an element of the deficit (unless you are a "fact free," wing nut pundit on the radio...), projections of future shortfalls are always added in hopes of further aggravating the deficit's fear factor.  The ultimate aim, of course, is to hand the Social Security Trust Fund over to Wall Street.

Solution:  Raise the cap on Social Security deductions to a level high enough to handle the load.  Social Security Administrators have already -- long ago -- doubled the contribution rates to accommodate the Baby Boomer influx of old people.

2. Medicare

Medicare is a huge problem, but not an unsolvable one.  As an unfunded Republican designed program, what we see before us is little more than an unwanted child.  Even though we see successful health care systems all around us, the wing nuts have invested heavily (for example, $1,250,000 per week since the health care "debate" began two years ago...) to guarantee that absolutely no one can figure out how to do this.

Solution:  Develop a credible revenue source, then design a program which can actually be paid for with the money available.  Naturally, everyone will hate the "final solution," but, at that point, it will at last become a political matter instead of simply a "feeding plan" for insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.  Further, draw a limit on the medical procedures which will be funded which is consistent with the amount of money we have chosen to spend.

After a few starving old people are seen dying on the side walks, Americans may find the inner strength to demand that we can, finally, buy what we want.

3. Foreclosures, Exemptions and Mortgage Loan Guarantees

There is probably no future in trying to pump money into failed mortgages.  Over priced houses purchased by unqualified buyers producing bogus security mortgage packages sold to under informed investors is a scenario which enters the realm of the "grateful dead."  Both the Americans and the investors need to finally realize that these were bad investments, and that this process was going to cost lots as the full reality of the mess "comes home to roost," even if "home" is Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, however, a new law which requires the holder of any property's mortgage to pay the corresponding property taxes would both decelerate the  ravaging appetite to foreclose everything while limiting the damage to the communities where the malfeasance occurred.  The law?  Simple.  If you hold any portion of a mortgage, you pay the property tax for that part of the property.

Solution:  The Federal Government gets completely out of the mortgage encouragement business.  The tax exemptions on mortgage interest payments ceases.  Fannie and Freddie are privatized for a future existence without loan guarantees financed by tax money.

America is already moving solidly toward becoming  an "apartment dwelling" society.  So be it.

4. Wall Street Speculation and High Speed Trading

Unregulated stock, bond and commodity trading has shown how lethal the practice can be in the last decade.  Still worshipping at the altar of "market self-correction," the U.S. economy has become frighteningly similar to an uncontrollably accelerating Toyota.  Even though the most savage, avarice soaked "capitalists" in the system will scream bloody murder at any effort to rein in the unavoidable damage they are causing, clamping down in this chaos will, in the end, move very positively to sustain the value of the dollars they are extracting in their frenzy.

Solution: Institute a sweeping structure of temporary windfall profits taxes.  Start small, then increase the take annually up to a predetermined level, then begin to gradually sunset them, all based on market and revenue levels, not corrupt politics.  Just like the Peoples Republic, an imposed economic plan.  Corporate oligarchs not wishing to pay the windfall profits taxes will have to reinvest in their companies.  If the idea can survive the Congressional "pirate clan," the re-investment side can be, domestically, heavily protectionist or even tariff driven.

As to Wall Street, a per unit issue stock trading tax can be imposed.  Every stock or bond sold and bought will pay the general fund tax base a fixed percentage of its price.  The rate can start low, incrementing upward annually along a pre-determined schedule.  This will incentivize investment for growth rather than for speculation.

5. Agricultural Subsidies

The existing "patchwork" structure contains almost no plan whatsoever for the support of comprehensive agricultural goals for the good of the country.  If one were to analyze what's currently in place, the conclusion would be that it has been designed to blindly funnel tax money to the "owners" of the lobbyists who promoted each little piece of it.  This is huge federal tax money, and the return on the investment has been a decades long chaotic feeding frenzy.

Solution:  Dump the entirety of existing legislation and start over with a rational, national goal as a guide.  MeanMesa would like to see the annual $250,000 subsidy check to Michelle Bauchman's "farming family" go away on the first day of the debates.  The corporate benefactors of agricultural subsidies have justified their good fortune as a necessary component to manipulating the food market.

This solution continues in the next item.

6.  National Health Food Policy and Tax

The current strategy is that bad food -- sodas, fast food burgers, corn syrup, etc. -- should be subsidized so long as the respective markets for the products are strong and their lobbyists are well paid.  This crazy policy dives directly into the incredibly expensive national obesity, cancer and diabetes problems, much of which are paid for by federal tax dollars.

Solution:  Neither farming, manufacturing, marketing or other support subsidies for any of these products should come from tax dollars.  How can we tell which ones are on the list?  Any food product which costs health care dollars qualifies.

The Military Budget

For this group of budget items, we'll just go directly to solutions.  MeanMesa visitors are already quite familiar with the problems.

7.  Limiting Costly Military Adventures

Institute a new policy of only "declared war."  The country will start saving right away if the decision to spend "war making" money has to face the political liability of requiring a "Declaration of War" before it can begin.  Of the $14 Tn national debt, roughly $4 Tn has been spent in Afghanistan and Iraq.

8.  Eliminating Military Contractors

Although these contractors might possibly make sense with respect to cost effectiveness in combat theaters, the inherent weakness deriving from their manipulation of Congress and the DoD totally outweighs their possible advantages.

9.  Eliminating Useless Weapons Systems

The U.S. military is already a gigantic junk pile full of Cold War systems.  Our latest "adversaries" figured this out quite quickly, designing a military response which could credibly bankrupt our country while costing very little.  We are not talking "a few little tweeks" here.  

The current defense budget is around half a trillion dollars per year.  It needs to be at least a third less than that.  The Pentagon procurement practices, along with the greedy Senators with bomb factories in their states, need to be crushed, exposed, disassembled and totally reorganized.  This is not only a budget issue, we are rapidly arriving at a point where our fundamental military profile is so cost ineffective that we couldn't fight a legitimate war if we had to.

Politics

Two political investments can lower the budget deficit by tremendous amounts.

10.  An Open Review of All Tax Subsidies

Dozens of American corporations are wallowing in massive tax subsidies.  These are not subsidies which take the form of actual checks from the government, but rather tax subsidies which eliminate federal revenue by providing exemptions for all sorts of corporate costs which would, otherwise, be taxable.  For example, the poor starving Exxon/Mobile Corporation receives an average of $16 Bn per year to help make ends meet.

This is a gigantic pile of tax money being redistributed from tax payers to stock holders.

Solution:  Even before we begin salivating over tax reform, start a House Committee which will review every tax subsidy on the books.  Further, the conclusions must be public.  Very public.  A rather long list can be prepared of all the revenues the government is failing to collect, and each case will either make sense to tax payers or not.  MeanMesa thinks this would be a great job for the House Republicans if they can find time in between passing bills against Sharia Law in Oklahoma, etc.

11.  Merchandise the Budget

Much of the corruption and other mischief which habitually drives our national budget into the mud survives simply because the American public has been carefully convinced that understanding the thing is beyond our human capacities.  MeanMesa finds this laughable.

Solution: It is high time for the U.S. budget to be honestly condensed, edited and packaged into a form which can sit on the kitchen table of every American family interested in knowing where the money is going.  When House spending comes up, we should all have a chance to understand what is being done.  The Federal version of the budget is eight thousand pages long, and not by innocent oversight, either.  The wing nut version is five sentences of incendiary half-truth, and not by innocent oversight, either.

American citizens and tax payers are supposed to make sense out of this mess so they will be an "informed electorate" when voting time comes around.  Right.  As citizens and tax payers, we are fully justified in demanding significantly better performance.  MeanMesa thinks this would also be a good job for the "deficit hawks" in the House.

As we go to work on our national debt, both progress and failures must be  made very public.  Why would anyone think that we should simply "fly blind" into a multi-trillion dollar project without demanding some very serious, very comprehensible  "progress reporting?" At least enough "progress reporting" to vote a little better -- a lot better -- than we have been doing lately.

For visitors who have threaded through this lumbering post, please accept MeanMesa's gratitude.  If any of these ideas have resonated as solid common sense, add a few more of your own!  Then what?  

Make a clever sign communicating your plan and walk down Central a couple of afternoons when the weather is nice!  Start a blog and show horn your friends into reading it!   Talk to your neighbors about these things!  Read a high school civics textbook!

Most important, start pumping this stuff into your Congressman's office!  Add a few troubling little innuendos about how you plan to vote in the next election!

Enough said.

A MeanMesa "Quickie" - Looking at Obama

Here in the spring of 2010 we have had a chance to take a look at the President we elected.  Although every drawling Southern Senator is still pumping out more "trash talk" in chorus with the high paid, wholly owned fat heads on AM radio and the cable channels, there remains the prospect to size up just what has been accomplished.

A Brief MeanMesa Account of History -- 

Not Opinion, History

To start, try to remember where we were in November of 2008.

Unregulated Wall Street maniacs, often acting in concert with other unregulated banksters, had managed to write up around $60 TRILLION dollars worth of their special financial derivatives, phony securitized mortgage packages and other stinky little scams.  The unelected autocrat was borrowing money from every country stupid enough to loan it to him to pay for war time tax cuts for the richest Americans, a Part D pharmaceutical plan written by Big Pharma lobbyists and hundreds of billions of dollars in tax payer paid subsidies to every big oil company whose CEO could pick up a phone.

Meanwhile, the little draft dodgers in the Oval office were losing a war in Afghanistan and sub-contracting huge amounts of another war in Iraq.  After the Iraqi Hydrocarbon Treaty was signed by that unfortunate country, the autocrat lost interest in anything but contracted oil field service profits and the war profiteering saturating every opportunity Halliburton, the unelected Vice President's corporation, could find there.

The richest 400 Americans saw their net worth mushroom by $630 BILLION dollars during the W's eight year looting festival.

Unemployment had been exploding for seven straight months while the bankers running the Fed and the Treasury Department did nothing, spending their time  instead scheming on how to finally destroy their competition.  The Republicans in the House and Senate, after already scratching every dollar possible from their chicken coop, were turning to their "campaign contributing" friends to elect a war mongering old man to the Presidency.

Who, exactly, was happy in 2008?

Well, the middle class wasn't particularly happy.  Their wages had remained frozen for most of two or three decades since the Reagan Administration.  The cost of living had gone up.  So had middle class tax rates.

On the other hand, Big Pharma was having a wonderful time.  Part D was shoveling tax payer cash into their pockets like the Mississippi River in a spring flood.  There was to be no negotiating.  Just pay the price and shut up.

The health insurance companies were also having a great time.  They found that the monopolies they had set up under cover of the Republicans in Congress could arbitrarily raise premiums as much as they pleased.

As mentioned before, the banksters and their Wall Street cronies were having a good time, too.  They were creating cash out of thin air making phoney financial instruments, having their back room buddies rate them sky high then selling them to every Arab and Chinaman with any money in the bank.

The draft dodging autocrat was flooding more tax dollars into every Cold War weapon system that made it off the drawing boards -- for example, the infamously useless and expensive F-22 fighter bombers.  Total cost?   Initial program estimate $62 Billion.  Original number of aircraft: 750, production beginning in 1994; then, 648 beginning in 1996; then 442 beginning in 2003; then, 277; then 183.  Price per plane?  $361,000,000.

The same ridiculous largesse was going on with new destroyers, new air borne refueling tankers, IED armor for HumVees in Iraq -- you name it.  Halliburton subsidiaries were building showers which electrocuted soldiers and selling bottled water for $8 a pop to our troops in the desert, all the while "landing" one emergency no-bid contract after another, year after year.

The corrupt cronies of the autocracy were soon enjoying a $1.2 Trillion dollar tax cut.  The national debt -- under control at the end of the Clinton Presidency -- was mushrooming at $500,000,000,000 per year or more.  Yet another tax cut followed the first one!  The unelected government borrowed the cash necessary to make good its promises to its "friends" by selling Treasury bonds so fast the ink was still wet when they arrived in Bejing.  BTW, those "friends" were neither nice people nor good citizens.

The stock market tanked along with the rest of the economy.  Terrified bankers stop lending to anyone -- not even other bankers.  Businesses ground to a halt.  Housing prices plummeted into a rancid swill of wounded home-owners and waves of foreclosures.

This systematic looting went on for eight years.

Internationally, the unelected draft dodgers lied their way into the Iraq War, then they began almost daily threats of bombing Iran with nuclear weapons.  When the lies fell apart, they turned the problem over to professional liars like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.  The illiterate "hill billies and bigots" were swayed into supporting them almost immediately.  Any one who hesitated or criticized was castigated by 100,000,000 watts of neo-con broadcast power every day.

Here, MeanMesa will avoid the ulta-shaky 9/11 reports and the unchallenged fear mongering of an unelected President who shamelessly frightened the hell out of the country with tales of being H-bombed by Iraq.

This gut-wrenching tale has a point.

It is now about fifteen months after the Obama Presidency began.  The "hill billies and bigots" have been convinced that all this damage -- and more, the  entirety of the known list is far too long to be included here -- should have been rectified by now.  The Tea Baggers have been saturated with outright lies from the neo-con monkeys secretly pulling the strings on that tiny "puppet" outfit (i.e. Dick Armey of Freedom Works).  The intensely greedy and fickle Independent voters are, allegedly, drifting back to the Republican Party en masse.

Screaming breathlessly with a wounded 401K earnings report in one hand and a foreclosure notice in the other, the citizens still refuse to learn about what actually happened to them...  who actually has all their money...  who are still planning to -- once and for all -- take over the entire country...

Enter Obama

Unemployment has finally decreased for the first time since the plummet began.  The Dow Jones is up 3,000 points.  Housing prices have begun to stabilize.

Many of the 3 billion Muslims in the world no longer think that the US is "waging a war" on Islam.  Our troops are withdrawing from Iraq.  95% of tax payers have had a tax cut.  Goldmann Sachs and other crooks are beginning to be investigated and sued by a restored SEC.

It's beginning to look like Afghanistan won't be another Viet Nam after all.  European leaders are no longer afraid to appear in a photograph with the American President.  Our national GDP is actually showing growth.

The auto giants are paying back their TARP loans -- so are the banks.  Obama says that we should get back almost all the money that the W packed out the door in the last days of the autocracy.

Presidential briefings are conducted in understandable, literate English.

Is he a perfect President?  No.  Has he delivered all his campaign promises?  No. 

Has he interrupted the writing of the last chapter about the American Democracy?

Probably.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

As for all you visitors, join me in his defense!

The Details of the Stimulus "Failure"

MeanMesa received the following note from David Plouffe (pronounced "pl aof "), recently the head of President Obama's campaign team.  He has now moved to a much more effective position working for the progressive candidates in the 2010 mid-term elections.  The following letter was sent by the OFA.  MeanMesa thought visitors not on the OFA mailing list might like to take a look at it.

By the way, why aren't MeanMesa visitors on the OFA mailing list?

The letter:  

Chad --

Wondering what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- President Obama's stimulus bill -- has accomplished? Look at this:

(A note from MeanMesa -- you really have to click on this baby to see the whole thing!)

One year ago tomorrow, after tens of thousands of you shared stories and called your representatives, the President signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

And while this anniversary isn't a cause for celebration, there is reason to be optimistic. This chart makes it clear: We're on the road to recovery.

Still, we know there is a long way to go. Many Americans are still struggling, and creating jobs remains President Obama's top priority.

Click here to learn more about the President's record on the economy, what we're doing to put more Americans back to work, and get easy-to-share information you can pass on to friends and family:

http://my.barackobama.com/Recovery

Thanks for making change happen,

David Plouffe

At this point, we will refresh all the eager bar chart viewers with bar chart from a previous MeanMesa post.  Yes, another bar chart.

This chart, of course, deals with the money totals of the national debt.  If one wishes, this can be inverted, then compared to the OFA "Jobs" chart.  During the W's autocracy, not only was the treasury being looted by the neo-cons (Yup, the same ones who are now bitching about deficits... Most of the Republicans now doing all the whining were like  mindless zombies, very busy voting "yes" on all that debt.) but, predictably, job losses unavoidably followed.  On the OFA "Jobs" chart, the autocrat's interest in doing anything for "Main Street" -- like trying to stop the plummeting employment numbers -- were entirely neglected.

"Durn, is et ever hard t' fahnd tahm fer stuff lahk thet when thur's, ya' know, lootin' to be done!"

To update the "looting" report, two very snakey Senators, Max Baucus (D[?]- Montana) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) groomed what was presented as a "bi-partisan" jobs bill in the Senate.  Now, MeanMesa can remind all visitors -- as evidenced in the first chart above -- Republicans are allergic to actual jobs bills dues to a tragic genetic defect.  Senator Baucus, infamous for heading the Finance Committee which produced the Senate Health Care Bill (also known as the Senate Wealth Care Bill for health insurance corporations...) reached across the aisle to birth this thing.

Naturally, to make the thing a little more "palatable" to the looters, certain, well, uh, pork had to be added.  The exact recipe called for 10% of the bill's cost to be TOTALLY DEDICATED to job creation and 90% to be either out right pork or a tasty Senate pork flavored substitute ingredient available only at the room temperature "day old counter" of WalMart.

The Senate:  Where dreams go to die.

The looting was so outrageous that, although Senator Reid would have eagerly agreed to contributing to a testicle implant program to get a bi-partisan anything through the paralyzed Senate, he killed it, saying that it would be simply too embarrassing to let it pass.

Thank you, Republicans.  All of us here, staggering under the economic train wreck you left when you were through last time, realize that your politics trumps our need for food on the table.  Egad! What were we thinking?

 

Why Unemployment Is So Stubborn

Have you heard any of our fellow patriots bitching about the fact that Obama has not solved the recession problem in his first year in office?

The surprise awaiting you is that this nice American you've over heard is possibly a secret billionaire!  One of MeanMesa's favorite quotes is from Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).  He told us two years ago "Not everyone is having a bad time under the Bush (W) economy.  The richest 400 hundred Americans have seen their personal wealth increase by $630 billion in the last eight years."

For the overly casual MeanMesa reader, that is a $630 billion dollar INCREASE, not a $630 billion dollar net worth.  The economy was thoroughly looted by the criminal elements in the W's autocracy, and the train wreck which is left is so grave that the full impact of the damage is just now manifesting here on Main Street.

MeanMesa has carefully "cut and pasted" some direct information from two interesting internet sources.  Anyone finding this suspiciously manipulative, aside from possibly having too much time of their hands, can follow the links to see the full content.

The Huffington Post

February 10, 2010

 

'No Labor Market Recession For America's Affluent,' Low-Wage Workers Hit Hardest: STUDY

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/10/no-labor-market-recession_n_456797.html

It's truly been a tale of two unemployment crises.

Though the national unemployment rate dipped slightly in January to 9.7 percent, a new study suggests that not only have low-income workers been the hardest hit by the jobs crisis -- but, shockingly, there has been "no labor market recession for America's affluent."

The study from Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada and Sheila Palma at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies suggests that the unemployment problem is largely a problem for low-wage workers (hat tip to the Curious Capitalist). 

At the New York Times, Bob Herbert delved into the study and noted, "The point here is that those in the lower-income groups are in a much, much deeper hole than the general commentary on the recession would lead people to believe."

According to the study, approximately 50 percent of households in the bottom decile of American income distribution are underemployed; in the second lowest decile, 37 percent of households can't find enough work. The authors write: "These extraordinarily high rates of labor underutilization among these two income groups would have to be classified as symbolic of a True Great Depression."

and, from the Curious Capitalist which is cited as the source for the  Huffington Post article:

The Curious Capitalist

Commentary on the economy, the markets, and business

February 10, 2010

Rich people still have jobs, poor people don't

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2010/02/10/rich-people-still-have-jobs-poor-people-dont/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+timeblogs%2Fcurious_capitalist+%28TIME%3A+The+Curious+Capitalist%29&utm_content=Google+Reader#ixzz0fBFWd1Qh

Bob Herbert's column in yesterday's New York Times pointed out that the unemployment crisis is not hitting all parts of the income spectrum equally. I was pretty stunned by the numbers, which go like this:

Range of incomes (by decile)	Unemployment rate
$12,160 or less	30.8%
$12,160-$20,725	19.1%
$20,725-$29,680	19.7% 15.3%
$29,680-$39,000	12.2%
$39,000-$50,000	9.0%
$50,000-$63,000	7.8%
$63,000-$79,100	6.4%
$79,100-$100,500	5.0%
$100,150-$138,700	8.0% 4.0%
$138,700+	3.2%

The data, which are for the fourth quarter, come from a new study (PDF) by Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada and Sheila Palma at Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. The researchers conclude that "what has been missing from the public debate over the labor market crisis is an honest and detailed analysis of which American workers have been most adversely affected by the deep deterioration in labor markets."

Furthermore:

At the end of calendar year 2009... workers in different segments of the income distribution clearly found themselves in radically different labor market conditions. A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution, a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top. There was no labor market recession for America's affluent.

I didn't post about this yesterday because I had a question about the extent to which people fall into lower income brackets precisely because they are unemployed. Lose your job for a year, and there's probably a decent chance you've gone from living in a household that makes $60,000 a year household to one that makes $30,000, right? Then that's where you get counted as unemployed.

I emailed Andrew Sum and he wrote back:

The paper is based on family income including all other members of family and includes theoretically all cash transfers including unemployment insurance. It is true that a person who had a job a year ago and lost it and has no [unemployment insurance] coverage or other income can get pushed down to a much lower income but they are an overwhelming exception.

Then he said something else interesting:

We ran this model before the recession started and results show overwhelmingly that low income workers were far more adversely affected. There are few job losses at top.

In other words, even in good times unemployment hits people in lower income brackets harder. I imagine that might have to do with the prevalence of temporary and seasonal work.

UPDATE: Here is how the numbers compare between the fourth quarter of 2007 and the fourth quarter of 2009.

The current economic climate has certainly exacerbated the effect. And that is true not just for unemployment, but also for underemployment (people working part-time even though they'd rather be working full).

More from the report:

Workers in the lowest income households faced an underemployment rate of nearly 21%... The incidence of these underemployment problems also fell steadily and considerably as we move up the income distribution, dropping to 6.1% for workers in the fifth decile to 3.6% in the eighth decile and to a low of only 1.6% for those workers in the top decile of the income distribution. Employed workers in the lowest income decile were 13 times as likely to be underemployed as workers in the top decile of the nation's income distribution in the fourth quarter of 2009. Again, workers at the bottom and top of the income ladder were encountering dramatically different labor market problems.

Although such an extensive direct quotation of other material may be somewhat out of MeanMesa's usual content policy, this information is simply too compelling not to share with all interested visitors!  For any American still media addled enough to assume that the current recession is no more than an expected, cyclical correction in our economy, you know, "just one of those things," get over it.

Thanks to the autocracy, the richest people in this country are literally awash in cash.  They are watching American workers become more and more desperate by the day, willing to accept worse and worse wages and benefits when  they finally allow a few jobs to begin to return.  The plutocrats will finally decide to allow the economy to begin recovery when they feel their advantage has become great enough. 

They are watching the price tag on all sorts of businesses plummet.  When those prices get low enough, they will painlessly buy whatever they want.  They are watching the price of real estate careening downward, too.  When they end the recession, they will have purchased all the property they wish to own at bargain basement prices.

As working class people, it will fall to us to scratch up enough folly to start chasing all those foreclosed houses.  It will be our job to drive the real estate appraisals back up to "bubble status" so our billionaire countrymen can cash in once again, you know, at their leisure.

The oligarchs have demonstrated to us -- without any "wiggle room" left to ponder --  that they own the Senate and already have plenty of patriotic "friends" in the House.  We can not reasonably count on our failed democracy to protect us from the bankster gangsters, the insurance thugs,  the torture queens or any of the other bottom feeders the W unleashed on the country, free to loot everything that wasn't bolted down.  If those wounds were not enough, we're now expected to take the McCains, Cheney's and Palins seriously.

Hey, MeanMesa visitor,  what do YOU plan to do about all this?  Does anyone else have time to be a citizen?

A Christmas Carol for 2009

The Uninvited Ghosts of Christmas Come To Call.

No need to change the sheets in the guest room, you'll be moving outside.

For a complete public domain text, including an audio, of Charles Dickens,

A Christmas Carol

http://www.timlebon.com/A%20Christmas%20Carol%20by%20Charles%20Dickens%20-%20Scrooge.html#Complete_text_of_A_Christmas_Carol_by

November of 2008 found the grotesque wreckage of the autocracy lurching awkwardly to an unseemly ending. It had, apparently, eaten itself -- along with much of the treasure of the rest of the country. The landscape was scarred by the plunder which had raged forward, unabated under the cover of the W.

Between the election and the inauguration, three months would pass amid the collapsed economy, the missing trillions, the wounded 401K accounts, the wars staggering, unmanaged across the Middle East and the horrid, violent rumblings of terrified, desperate dictatorships in North Korea and Iran.

Admittedly, MeanMesa's idea of a good time for that moment had to do with guillotines and proletariat mobs rushing along Pennsylvania Avenue and Wall Street. Happily, cooler minds prevailed. Happily, cooler minds had been elected and were in charge.

Between November of 2008 and January of 2009 a single question floated about everywhere in the country. We all either knew for certain or suspected mightily that the democracy was in grave peril. Would the Junior Bush and his crime family leave office peacefully? Was there a sufficient remnant of the nation remaining in tact after the looting to spur a momentary reluctance to engage in even greater, even more ambitious, more unbelievably outrageous dreams of power for the unelected incumbent W?

With strange childhood fears still haunting the autocrat, he blinked. The nation and the democracy prevailed, perhaps even in the face of unlikely odds.

However, since the first flicker of actual daylight warmed the wounded and the dead, three unsettling faces have come to visit our table in 2009. We can say what they are right here. We can consider this entire collection of incomplete or artificial mindsets a grisly parody of Dickens' Ghosts of Christmas.

2009 -- the Ghost of Christmas Past

The gravity of those dark moments when this young country teetered on the edge of a permanent descent into oligarchy have passed too quickly. We could be discussing the descent into the purgatorial limbo of a trashed economy, but, looking back, MeanMesa sees the crisis as one with far greater breadth.

The Ghost of Christmas Past carries with it the memory -- or the dream -- or the nightmare -- of the state of the nation before the destruction began. With such a pleasant, calming wraith entreating the survivors with comforting visions of times long ago lost, the gravity of the looting and other destruction slips into a sleepy numbness. Why, in no time we deserve to be right back where we were before!

We dream that our houses will regain their value. We dream that Wall Street will be conveniently distracted by new rushes of money flowing into its bottomless coffers. We dream that our armies will win simple, understandable victories, extracting undefined success from unmanaged catastrophes. We dream that, around the world, the unsuccessfully frightened will once again quake at the mighty countenance of our unquestioned power, shelving their fetal H-Bombs and returning to a quiet subservience.

The Ghost of Christmas Past will tempt us with every delight from petticoats to V-8 Buicks, all shrouded in a pleasing narcotic sauce.

Unfortunately, that vision is not credible, and it shouldn't be. Yet, a large minority of American citizens continue to frame the entire scope of possibilities in the fleeting promises of this Ghost of Christmas Past. This "slippage from reality" is tenderly fostered by those wishing only to prevent Obama from "righting the ship."

Reckless and desperate, these voices of the Ghost of Christmas Past seem, when considered perhaps too generously, to be obsessed with completing the destruction of the country. From ex-Vice Presidents to mindless "dirty shirt preachers" to drawling Southerners in the Congress to inflammatory right wing talk show hosts, they care nothing about "righting the ship" and everything about yet one more, cheap manipulation of every hill billy and bigot who will still listen to them.

All these have a maxim, and that maxim is the chorus behind the Ghost of Christmas Past's every word and thought. The maxim?

"Nothing is real."

Everything is politics. Everything is immediate advantage -- regardless of the cost of neglecting the horrible, impending rush of national collapse. They have become infatuated with remaining the "top dogs" in the "I told you so" crowd, that is, narcotized -- infatuated with an impossible dream of a non-existent Christmas Past even when the cold ocean water pours into the sinking ship, chilling their ankles.

We can see even progressives joining the lament. There are progressives who have begun to drink the Kool-Aid of the Ghost of Christmas Past. For example, Ed Schultz, an AM radio host MeanMesa respects greatly, now voices criticism of the President for not solving the problems which face us. However, these laments of his fall on ears still seeking choices we do not have. The President is doing everything possible to increase the number of choices we have with his administration's policies, and the fact is that the choices Ed Schultz insists upon are simply not choices we actually enjoy.

One more time. The whimsical, immaterial possibilities in the song of the Ghost of Christmas Past are defined by debating choices we do not have at the present moment. Logic tells us that we can either lament the narcotic dream choices we no longer enjoy or begin in earnest to replace them with possibilities which actually exist.

Some of this criticism is "validated" by our memory of something FDR said when confronted by those wishing to remove racism from the country. "Make me do it!" What FDR was actually telling these progressives of his day was that the choice of removing racism was not a choice he had. His response to them was, "Get busy! Put this choice on the table! If you do that, I will make the choice!"

Perhaps Mr. Schultz finds himself -- and the President -- in a similar position as the civil rights proponents and FDR. The deep bite of Mr. Schultz's criticism may actually be vindicated when considered this way. Perhaps, he is only acting "to make Obama do it." MeanMesa is watching both Schultz (and, there are many others...) and the President, hoping that this is the case.

2009 -- The Ghost of Christmas Present

A new President, armed with a formidable pragmatism, finds himself embattled as he tries to sustain what is, very likely, still a sinking ship. To his right, he is standing off the crumbling pillars of an imaginary position of prosperity and strength. To his left, he is trying to frantically re-educate the American public to a minimal state where it might rationally understand its desperate circumstances and become committed to introducing violently necessary, uncomfortable new choices.

On his inauguration day, Obama could not help but see the storm advancing on the nation. As a admirable optimist and idealist, he saw that the country, in some form, really could survive the threats now facing it. However, as he reviewed "his troops," he saw a disturbing confusion, a defect so serious that, if left uncorrected, might permanently destroy the last, fleeting chance for restoring what was left to some kind of viable form which could continue to exist in the future.

It was another case of Primary and Secondary Models. The Primary Model encompassed the entire material scope of the wreckage -- the economy staggering forward denuded of its life blood, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan fumbling along in mindless carelessness, health care's potentially bankrupting gravity, the savagery of the brokers and bankers as they continued to extract far more than they deserved, the petulance of Iran and North Korea, and the list went on. The Primary Model comprised the tangible responses to all of this.

The Secondary Model was just as dismal. Setting aside all the tangible threats of the Primary Model, the Secondary Model dealt entirely with the national psychology. After all, it would be the citizens of the United States who would ultimately decide to dedicate themselves to the solutions of all these problems.

However, Obama found himself with great numbers of citizens unwilling to risk anything, unwilling to sacrifice anything. Citizens unwilling to take their turn at bailing water from the sinking ship.

Retreating to the very optimism and ideals which had made him so popular, Obama now faced the reality of the Secondary Model. All these overly selfish citizens, he insisted, were not really crazy or greedy. Once they were given a reasonable chance to understand the nature of the threats we faced, Obama remained hopeful that a new strength could be nurtured, based on a new national rationality.

However, no matter how pressing the immediacy of the threats of the Primary Model, the crippling disadvantage of the Secondary Model would have to be addressed first. A new national psychology would be required before material steps to survive the threats of the Primary Model would become possible. The citizens must be brought into a new state of awareness where their concern and willingness to participate could emerge to face the "meat grinder."

How could the scales of decades of carefully groomed blindness be removed from the faces of those who would, by stark necessity, be required to march in his army?

Obama, had he indulged the role as the Ghost of Christmas Present, might have simply launched out in one revealing diatribe after another, exposing those who perpetually placed personal gain above any national consideration. There might have been massive indictments arising from the Department of Justice, rounding up the scoundrels en mass to face their day in court.

However, the President found the country unable to reasonably "consume" such a terrific correction. The citizens who encountered this Ghost of Christmas Present still gazed through disruptive lenses, still saw all of the possible choices as the artificial ones which had been so meticulously inserted into their understanding of everything.

It is one thing to inspire a soldier to return fire in anger or self-preservation when he is on the battle ground. It is another to inspire him to face that risky uncertainty when he cannot understand or accept that he is on a battle ground. The nation Obama inherited was convinced that there was no battle ground, that bleeding would be unnecessary and that the perpetrators of this disaster were, actually, only slightly misguided in their avarice and ambition.

His first steps as he worked on the Secondary Model was to reveal the enemy. A public who remained convinced that there was no "battle ground" and no "enemy" needed to be shown the dismal reality of the situation, and, even though the President faced literal Visigoths at the Gates, he would have to delay the defense of the state until he could credibly convince the citizens that those Vandals were anything more threatening than mere innocent tourists.

Out came Obama's spot lights. The citizens needed to see for themselves the unchecked greed and corruption which had insinuated itself into the congress. The health care debate accomplished that education "in spades." The citizens needed to see for themselves the unthinkable avarice of the brokers and bankers who would take their tax dollars, pause for a moment, then catapult themselves into yet another crippling binge of greed and arrogance. The citizens needed to see for themselves the endless, nauseating temptations offered by the military to mindlessly increase war, always promising some undefined success if the military adventures were just resourced a little more.

Obama's spot lights did not reveal just a few, isolated cases where tax payers had been carefully cast as pigeons, but rather, an epidemic horde of such miscreants who had, it seemed, permanently attached themselves to the necks of the citizenry like vampire bats.

The Ghost of Christmas Present sang the calming song that everything was alright, everything was as it should be. Vast numbers of citizens remained hypnotized under that convenient and comfortable thrall. Yet, Obama bravely faced the necessity that all these sleeping citizens must awake and participate in their own survival. The spell must be broken.

The President has had some significant success at this undertaking, this illumination he must perform before he can actually face the real problems. Many of the uncommitted among us have, if not actually becoming committed, at least begun to be very suspicious about the implied "reality" of that narcotic song of the Ghost of Christmas Present. Obama patiently continues his relentless revelation of the perfidy we face at the hands of these obsessively greedy types, their cynical purchase of the representatives we have always previously trusted and relied upon, and the grave danger they now present to the survival of the nation.

2009 -- The Ghost of Christmas To Come

There are clearly two dreams for the future. One will be a soothing return to the hypnotic avoidance of "everything real" sponsored by the dream that America will, somehow, return to the state of high addiction we were convinced that we enjoyed before. The other will be a rational, clear headed appraisal of what possibilities we actually have, given the wounds which have effectively crippled us during our "period of distraction."

There are, actually, real possibilities for our future, but they are not ones which will simply arrive untended or by gleeful serendipity, the automatic and entitled result of our national "exceptionalism." As Americans we will be required to design these future dreams and commit ourselves to sacrifice and work for their accomplishment.

If the lessons of President Obama and the Ghost of Christmas Present have adequately educated us about the reality of our present moment, we will have the understanding to accomplish this design for the future. Should we, as citizens, remain intoxicated with a dreamy past which never actually existed, employing that "house of shadows" as the foundation of our hope for the future, our possibilities for a future "in reality" -- that is, a future punctuated with "real" goals, "real" work and "real" accomplishments -- fades dramatically.

The ugly fact is that we can, actually, continue along the path we have taken toward our own destruction. There remains still more wealth in the nation which can be thoughtlessly consumed for still a few more months or years until we find ourselves entirely, completely, inescapably and irretrievably bankrupt. We can "privatize" our sidewalks when everything else has been sold, sell the titles to them to the Chinese and throw one last "history bending binge" of a frenzied consumption party, but, after that, we will have to turn off the lights and stagger into the forest, naked.

On the other hand, we can cease "humming along" with the song of the Ghost of Christmas To Come, roll up our sleeves, recapture our hope, defeat those who would enslave us in our own inebriation of mindless consumption and unexamined greed and fear, and design a future for ourselves. We can forever dispatch the drunken fantasy that we will return to an imaginary past because we are entitled to it. We can learn all the moving parts about where, exactly, we are as we begin our reconstruction.

We can base our new definition of our future on choices we actually have.

MeanMesa's compliments to the President.

For more points of view about America's economic future, Ben Stein in the NY Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/business/29every.html

and Trevor Shipp on FinancialNut, a fairly good background article:

Is Hyperinflation Looming in America’s Economic Future?

http://www.financialnut.com/is-high-inflation-looming-in-our-economys-future/

MeanMesa encourages visitors to "Google around!" We all need to be "up to speed" on this matter because it is happening RIGHT NOW!

and for MeanMesa, eating its own -- Obama's Recovery: Partners or Predators

http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2009/04/obamas-recovery-partners-or-predators.html

Complex Mathematical Equations Explain Everything

Any contemporary topic can be amplified by complicated mathematics making it overwhelmingly persuasive to the masses of American media consumers. 113

Part A: The Economy

During the intermittent periods of M3 "slippage" due to unforeseen variability in the previously stable projective instrument markets, i.e. M14, an unfortunate and spontaneous... yuck.

For MeanMesa visitors interested in understanding the current economic difficulty, try this.

The actual problem seems to be the "missing money." How much? The Bush cronies managed to extract roughly three to six trillion dollars ($3 - 6,000,000,000,000) from the national economy in eight years. Naturally, this has led to economic problems. The exact mouths now voicing the specious complaint that Obama's reconstruction plan isn't working are watching for their next opportunity to loot the United States for whatever is left. Those voices now tell us to "ignore the man behind the curtain" and listen to Dick Cheney telling us about "the threat."

It's time to take a look at the "man behind the curtain."

Oh, golly. There's just nothing to do now. We should look forward, not back. Really? Take a quick glimpse of events unfolding in the Taiwanese judicial system (link provided below). Does anyone figure that the "W" hasn't noticed? These things have a habit of creeping once they get started. Now, back to "the threat." Ignore the man behind the curtain.

Taiwan Ex-Leader Jailed for Life
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8250099.stm

Part B: Health Care

This mathematical equation is somewhat simpler.

No Robust Public Option = New Senator

There now, that wasn't so bad was it?

Stick to your guns. No amount of carefully crafted confusion can turn this sack of worms into anything besides what it is.

A quick note from MeanMesa:

It is now one more year after the 911 attack. Although conspiracy theories are running like lemmings over a cliff, there is one inescapable fact which doesn't rely on a thousand laymen pretending to be structural engineers, CIA agents or top secret diplomats. The fact? Most Americans don't believe the story prepared for our consumption by the "wholly owned" 911 Commission. That rag is falling apart a little more with every month that passes. The link below is not about the conspiracy.

It is about the cause.

In any event, MeanMesa was here a year ago. Take a few minutes to check out:

"Why Not Revisit 911 Seven Years Later"

http://meanmesa.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-not-revisit-911-seven-years-later.html

Obama’s Recovery: Partners or Predators?

Is the President playing “Go Fish” or Chess?

Teaching neo-cons that there can more on the table besides a “carrot or a stick.” 86

Americans listened, considered and agreed with the propositions for national recovery presented in the Obama campaign. If there were any confusion, we may now conclude it arose from the painstaking media grooming of its implied image of the depth and severity of the economic looting done under the cover of the Bush autocracy. Over the decades of “conservative” administrations such as Reagan or the senior Bush, we have grown passively accepting of a routine corruption which had been presented as an "acceptable" and entirely "American," neo-con "leadership" principle.

It has gone even further than that.

We have accepted these gradually growing insults piece meal (Remember the frog who jumps from the boiling water, but remains, comfortably, in the slowly warming, tepid pan?” Yum. Boiled frog.) Americans have slowly and patiently been convinced that a great number of reactionary, neo-con principles are American values or, even, make sense.. For example, in the past couple of weeks from this writing, an “American flag” ship was “piratized” off the coast of Somalia. Its legitimate and honorable “mission” there was the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian supplies to our national friends in Kenya.

But wait.

The reason that ship was flying an American flag -- it had been temporarily renamed after the State of Alabama -- was thanks to a UN ruling. For some reason, the goods of our well intentioned altruism had to be purchased in the US at a price eight times higher than the same commodities could be purchased in the region. For some reason, those commodities had to be transported in an “American flag” ship which plied the waters of the Middle East at eight times the cost of a local alternative.

For some reason? For what reason? The neo-cons have successfully imposed their idea that any good act should begin with a good profit.

The same things happen everywhere. The Indians were persuaded to quit producing generic AIDS drugs, making the Bush Altruism Initiative of aiding African states with that disease one which purchased only “full priced,” first line, American made pharmaceuticals for the effort. Coupled with the irrational neo-con -- and now, Papal -- condemnation of prophylactic supply, promotion and use, the pharmaceutical model of “altruistic” profitability was realized, lubricated and firmly saddled astride vacuous, failed premises of abstinence and other convenient, recent appliances of the prevailing mythology.

These points are presented as example of our amazing, well developed idea that men cannot do good for any reason if it excludes profit. The possibility of assistance, altruism or even cooperation must always be offered in conjunction with an appealing, “oh, by the way,” kind of suddenly and innocently discovered profit.

With this brief account of fundamental neo-con psychology, let us move on the matter of the stimulus and its unwilling participants -- partners and predators.

Why are these participants unwilling and why are these participants, well, even participants in the first place?

First, who are they? The list can easily be extracted from the tedious, frustrating denizens of the current news cycle. There were bankers who got money to make loans and then didn’t make loans. There were health care HMO’s who received an invitation to change their ways, then didn’t change their ways. There were car company executives who were told to rationally reorganize themselves who then proposed “changes” which guaranteed the continuation of their same ruthlessly destructive past policies. There were pharmaceutical companies who were told to release their legislatively protected extortion-strangle-hold on the medical franchise. There were Wall Street “hedge hogs,” oil speculators and investment bankers who were told that they had to “take a hit” on their inflated, imaginary profit and loss statements, who, instead, scrambled around to move their imaginary “profits” off shore so they could pay all of their attention to the looting of the stimulus money (“stay the course,” “cut the taxes,” “make me whole,” et cetera).

All of them were train wreck remnants of the “If anything good is going to happen, it is going to happen to me!” greed ideology of the past. Their obsession of the moment is an arrogant example of their hubris, that is, their absolute rejection of the new “change” and “cooperate” theme of the Obama administration -- and the electorate which created it. Naturally, the first step for these brain dead felons was to purchase some Senators, which they did. By the way, some of our Senators are simply too frightened or honorable to enlist in this outrage. It seems that the real bargains in the Senate are the bourbon drenched neo-con bigots -- hillbillies with an ill advised continuing allegiance to the previous regime of Bush protected avarice.

All these folks seriously believe that what is happening to us right now is nothing more than a current model of what has happened to us in the past. Although this may be more exciting than usual to these “geniuses of capitalism” who are managing the pharmaceutical, banking, health care and other no bid contracting interests, they remain convinced that Obama’s efforts to rescue our economy present nothing new, that is, simply more of the same opportunities which have served their historical extraction practices in the past. They expect and intend to emerge from this “difficulty of the masses” with even fatter pockets and the “ownership deeds” to even more Senators.

Did we ever imagine what feelings a vampire might experience after he sucked the blood from the last living human? In this case, he would convince himself that his last victim was actually not the last living human and fly off gleefully in search of his next prey.

Obama’s proffered gambit was simple enough. “Stop exploiting our economy. It cannot survive any more of your pretend version of free marketism. All of you parasites have done unacceptably well for yourselves at the expense of everyone else, and now, the 'everyone else' is staggering along, near death, as you contemplate your schemes to extract even more from the ambulance staff which has come to rescue them.”

He has asked the bankers to take his bail out money and change their ways, take a few risks for the good of the country (for them, country = their personal finances). Instead, they have been shopping to purchase each other in the hour of peril while sitting on their bulging coffers of bail out money. He has asked the health care moguls to reconfigure their extortion to include the interest of those in the electorate who might need a doctor. Instead, those same moguls have redirected all their discretionary profits to an ad campaign to wreck his Presidency.

Obama has asked the executives of GM and Chrysler to “bleed a little” and reconfigure their business plans to something remotely rational. Instead, they have collapsed to their road weary, inflammatory “swan song” of blaming the unions for everything. He has asked the Senators to, provocatively to them, think of the good of the country instead of their “astonishingly beneficent campaign contributions.” Instead, they -- along with their neo-con progeny in the House -- have marched lockstep in a dismal phalanx of denial and greed all the while hoping in their wet dreams for Obama's failure and destruction.

Does all this describe a foolish failure of a pollyanna in the White House? Has the new President continued to “walk into the props” of a superior neo-con meat grinder whose sole claim to fame is more experience at cynicism?

Maybe not.

Who is ready to characterize Obama’s rather formidable capacity for effective political strategy based on such a short sighted view of his leadership path as it has emerged thus far? If you have this inclination, perhaps you should consider lowering your voice for a few months. If you think his embarrassing rejection at the hands of the so-called House Republicans signifies evidence of a lethal miscalculation in his political tactics, perhaps you should wait for the next act in this play.

Still, it seems that every ambitiously honorable attempt by this White House has ended poorly, that is, all the entreaties “across the aisle” have resulted in another of his restorative plans being dragged behind the truck of guffawing and boisterously emboldened, medievalist Republicans and other corporate schemers. The “Fox Conclusion?” The President is, aside from being a socialist, fascist, traitor, Muslim, gun controlling, international relations appeasing, abortion financing, gay black man, a ninny. The Foxites believe that they have prevailed. The tea baggers think that their frenzied message, whatever it was, is compelling, that is, has gained traction. The bankers think that they will be vindicated in the future, elevated by their tenacious grip on their publicly financed “McDuck Money Bins” and their complete refusal to participate in the resurrection of the economy or the country, now in a mortal, death grip peril. The AIG boys assume that tax payers won’t remember paying the cash for the outrage of their bonuses.

On the other hand, we can create this model in another frame entirely.

Obama entered his position of power with ambitions to reconfigure the economy (and a long list of other things, too) in a way that would redirect some of America’s prosperity back to those who have patiently provided the resources which support it. He knew, even before his inauguration, that those who had developed a criminal “nutrition” requirement of vast tax money in their pockets would react violently to retain their previous parasitic advantages.

They have. Just listen to them. Today, their lies could be baled like hay at harvest time.

Perhaps President Obama, not really stranded and bewildered on a side track after the neo-cons so arrogantly humiliated his efforts at reconciliation, is actually right on target. These practiced criminals have invested very heavily in their program of promoting themselves as honest “partners” in the rescue effort while disguising their more factual qualities as looters and criminals, that is, “predators,” hiding in wait to loot the life blood from the stimulus money.

Money we have paid and allocated to trying to restore the damage of their past looting.

Obama could have swung the massive hammer of electoral outrage in the first few minutes of his administration in a sweeping correction -- think of it as chasing the money lenders from the temple if that analogy is not too messianic. However, if he had taken this approach, the validity of his plan would have been supported only be his claims of its necessity. In the minds of Americans there would have remained the question: “Are these wounded victims of his really this criminal? Do they really place the prosperity and safety of our country in such a low position of importance compared to their continued wealth extraction?”

No. Obama has let these “bottom feeders,” perhaps emboldened by the likes of Carl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Sara Palin, AIG, Wall Street, Newt Gringrich and other “tea-bagger-wanna-be’s” -- well, you are familiar enough with the pathetic denizens of this long list, emerge into the light. He has allowed them to “show their true colors,” their traitorous lack of commitment to the national survival driven by a narcotic, decades long habit of successful greed.

If we were describing a “trial” of this past behavior of his now screaming critics, what we have seen so far would be the “discovery phase.” The character of these criminals had to be exposed, finally revealed to their victims, in this case the American tax paying electorate. Obama has presented the evidence we lacked before, and that evidence seems quite capable of penetrating the thrall of the controlled media’s past efforts to keep us hypnotized.

No one believes he has cock roaches until they reveal themselves in the light.

Remain calm and hopeful. All this had to happen first. The crimes had to be exposed and defined. Our national situation is, most likely, going to collapse to a truly desperate state as 2009 proceeds. We taxpayers and voters will be confronted with Obama’s compelling evidence as he ultimately makes his case for change. That will bring us to our trial’s “sentencing phase.”

To think that the foundering mess we see at this moment is a truly representative preview of that probably means that we are slowly loosing our collective hope. If any of us has decided to take that path, take it without me.

For the "media view" of the economic recovery plan,

http://cbs5.com/campaign08/obama.economic.recovery.2.904768.html

and a background look at some of the criticism of the recovery plan:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white_house/jan-june09/obama_03-24.html
http://www.newsmax.com/us/GOP alternative budget/2009/03/27/196690.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/02/05/president-barack-obama-fires-back-at-critics-of-economic-stimulus-plan.html

and finally, our traditional "Wiki" explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009


MeanMesa visitors who are not well acquainted with the economic recovery plan can find a wide variety of information available in the Google entry for this topic. As Americans we are spending an immense amount of our tax money in this effort to resuscitate our "critically ill" country now that the Bush parasites have been sent back to Texas. Its our money, our President and our future. Who could remain uninterested at a time like this?